Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Homeland Security Contractor Accused of 'Prolific' Child Porn

A computer specialist for the Department of Homeland Security was arrested Thursday for being one the nation’s most prolific disseminators of child pornography.

After a months-long investigation, FBI agents tracked Peter W. North to his home in Alexandria where they discovered 80 gigabytes — the equivalent of 25,000 pictures or 250 hours of video on your iPod — of child pornography in an external hard drive, according to a sworn statement by FBI agent Chad J. Gallagher.

North had come to Gallagher’s attention after the agent reviewed a list of the “most prolific offerors of apparent child pornography in the United States” that had been pieced together by a Wyoming-based federal task force. Working with Comcast, North’s Internet provider, Gallagher was able to use an Internet Protocol address assigned to North to find his home.